There are several possible reasons for this, depending on your operating system:

LINUX: If you are getting Socket type not supported, try modprobe af_packet or recompile your kernel with SOCK_PACKET enabled.

*BSD: If you are getting device not configured, you need to recompile your kernel with Berkeley Packet Filter support. If you are getting No such file or directory, try creating the device (eg cd /dev; MAKEDEV ; or use mknod).

*WINDOWS: Nmap only supports ethernet interfaces on Windows for most operations because Microsoft disabled raw sockets as of Windows XP SP2. Depending on the reason for this error, it is possible that the --unprivileged command-line argument will help.

SOLARIS: If you are trying to scan localhost or the address of an interface and are getting '/dev/lo0: No such file or directory' or 'lo0: No DLPI device found', complain to Sun. I don't think Solaris can support advanced localhost scans. You can probably use"-PN -sT localhost" though.

QUITTING!

Then I realized that the VPN connection was a PPP device which is probably at the top of the device type interfaces order list and Nmap is trying to use it in order to scan, which is the point of failure because Nmap on Windows without RAW sockets (means Windows XP SP2+) can only use Ethernet devices. So I try played "Imaginary Linux on Windows" and added the option "-e eth0" which specifies using the Ethernet device indexed at 0 and it worked like a charm.

I was in another day of jumping from a client to a client, securing another bank in Israel when my girlfriend called and said "Honey, I am at the office, I have absolutely nothing to do and I can't connect from here to our computer at home to continue my project". I said, O.K, let's see what we can do on a 5 minute phone call. Now just want to make it clear, my girlfriend is an Information System Instructor, she is no developer or hacker.

Me: "Honey, go to http://www.teamviewer.com, can you download it?"

Her: "yes, but when I run the setup.exe it says something weired like 'windows has blocked this software because it can't verify the publisher' and it won't let me install"

Me: "O.K, Open Start-Run, type notepad and space, now click on setup.exe and drag it to the text box at Start->Run. Now add ':Zone.Identifier' just before the last quotes. What do you see?"

Her: "I see something like ZoneId=3, now what?"Me: "I can't talk, going into a meeting, try to change it to 1 or delete everything, bye bye bye"

After 10 minutes I get an SMS "thanks honey it worked!!!".

Well we found a bug, I wouldn't really call it a "Privilege Escalation" but I guess you don't have to be a hacker to bypass windows security restrictions :)

Thursday, July 9, 2009

As for any large product, Microsoft Windows operating system is built on its previous versions code. Some of this code even goes back until Microsoft Windows 98.

In Windows 98 a new look was introduced called "WebView" which included the way folders are displayed and the way the desktop is displayed are all HTML templates which were also editable to the default administrative user.You can read more about it here:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-s/library/bb776835(VS.85).aspx

Those HTML Templates had the extension "htt". In order for the folder templates to function properly and being able to display the current folder, a few automatically expended variables were added to the module filtering the "htt" files. These are:%TEMPLATEDIR% (hardcoded)%THISDIRPATH% (hardcoded)%THISDIRNAME% (hardcoded)%BACKGROUNDIMAGE% (registry)%LOGOLINE% (registry)

Webvw.dll is the module which is responsible for all the Webview installation and normal activity and mshtml.dll is the main module for HTML Filtering & Rendering used Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer.

When Microsoft Windows is installed and webvw.dll is registered, it adds it CLSID and a few registry keys. The interesting ones are these:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WebView\TemplateMacrosHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WebView\TemplateMacros\BACKGROUNDIMAGEDefault = "%SystemRoot%\Web\wvleft.bmp"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WebView\TemplateMacros\LOGOLINEDefault = "%SystemRoot%\Web\wvline.gif"

Every time an htt file is rendered, without any local-remote or any zone consideration, those variables are replaced with the current system's path.This is the code inside mimeflt.cpp which contains the bug:Lines 360 to 433:

In Windows XP the variables "%THISDIRPATH%" and "%THISDIRNAME%" were removed from the Mime Filter which means %TEMPLATEDIR%, %BACKGROUNDIMAGE% and %LOGOLINE% would still be translated into the current windows directory.

Monday, June 15, 2009

From live and automatic event log analysis up to personal "on-key" tokens and remotely controlled security cameras.

These technologies should be used carefully. For example if the token generates 6 digits and there is no password complexity enforcement, users can set their password to "1" and then we'll get a 7 character length password. If the data from the log will not be filtered and will be in html format, it may execute code. Even worse, if it is viewed at the command line console, it may execute code using the console color control characters.

When talking about security cameras, a security flaw in the camera's simple application server may cause the entire video stream to be accessible to an intruder.

While consulting to a big financial customer, I discovered the security cameras installed are easily accessible to anyone thanks to a very simple logical flaw. Not to mention default user accounts, empty password sets, the ability to brute force, directory traversal and some classic authorization bypass vulnerabilities.

Most of the security cameras in my country are bought from Korea, some of the software is written by the vendor and some by the distributer. Both of them should pay much more attention to security so we won't have the same classic vulnerabilities over and over again.

Monday, May 4, 2009

My friend ax1les has a 5 digit ICQ number and he always gets wiered messages that turn out to be phishing or links to trojans. A few days ago, he got this message:

He thought it would be a good idea that we'll take a look at that website together, and we did :)

In the last decade russians really mad fun of the world using the Internet.The website http://icq-confirm.info/ is a phishing website that "confirms" your ICQ account credentials are still valid (yeah right). The amazing thing is he didn't even bother changing the title from the former text "icq.com" :)

But of course his business is really successful as he is also the owner of the mega-icq-shop, he is trying to hide so much that he event left it in the domain's whois details......

Anyway, the really wiered thing about this case is that while i am writing this post this website is not loading anymore...the DNS no longer resolves to any IP and their former IP 95.211.7.5 reponse with "Apache is working properley" when requesting the Host "icq-confirm.info".May be I scared them away with a few little DNS requests or the cops just randomly knocked on their door :)

About Me

Hacking computers since i am 12. Published more then 65 advisories before the age of 17. Before 18 worked in Finjan Software as Senior Security Researcher, published 6 advisories in Finjan. Been in the Israeli Army Intelligence for 3 years. Started a security startup company Aspect9. I Was VP Technologies at Citadel Technologies, now CEO at Defensia (http://www.defensia.co.il)